Related notes: Art

Humanity

Homo Erectus

2,000,000 to 250,000 years BCE: Development of Acheulian stone axes, a major leap in tool-making.

Antiquity

Cognitive Revolution

100,000 BCE: Emergence of complex thinking, including “If > And > Then” logic. This jump in cognition led to:
- Empathy:
  - Cognitive empathy: Ability to understand someone’s intentions.
  - Affective empathy: Emotional response to others’ thoughts and feelings.
- Cooperation and teaching: Essential for societal development.
- Self-reflection: Introspection and planning.
- Referential communication: Sharing specific information.

First Artworks

First Paintings

40,000 BCE:
- Earliest cave paintings.
- Creation of the first musical instrument (flute from bird bone).
- Early adornments like necklaces. First Sculptures
25,000 BCE:
- Venus figurines and other early sculptures.
- Development of needles (circa 23,000 years ago), aiding in clothing creation.

Agricultural Revolution

12,000 BCE: Transition from hunting-gathering to farming. Key innovations include:
- Domestication of plants and animals. key crops (wheat, barley, rice, maize) and animals (sheep, goats, cattle).
- Development of permanent settlements. irrigation systems for agriculture.
- Surplus production allows specialization: potters, weavers, traders, and leaders.
7,000–5,000 BCE
- South Asia (Indus Valley and surrounding areas): Domestication of rice and millet.
- China (Yellow and Yangtze River Valleys): Cultivation of millet and rice.
- Africa (Nile Valley and Sub-Saharan regions): Domestication of sorghum, yams, and teff.
7,000–4,000 years ago (5,000–2,000 BCE)
- Europe: Agriculture spreads from the Fertile Crescent to southern and central Europe.
- Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America): Domestication of maize (corn), beans, and squash.
- South America: Domestication of potatoes, quinoa, and llamas.
Jericho (circa 9,000 BCE): One of the earliest known settlements, with defensive walls.
Çatalhöyük (circa 7,500 BCE): A large Neolithic settlement featuring art and religion.

Bronze Age

(~3,000 BCE - ~1,200 BCE)

Iron Age

(~1,200 BCE - ~500 CE)

Latin (Greece and Rome): Classical Antiquity (6th century BCE - 5th century CE).
Jewish: Ancient period, emerging alongside early monotheistic traditions (2000 BCE - 1st century CE).
Chinese (including Japan and Korea): Ancient period, starting with Confucianism and early dynasties (circa 1000 BCE - onwards).
Brahmanic (India): Vedic Period (1500 BCE - 500 BCE) and beyond, with the rise of caste-based systems.
Arabian: Rise of Islam (7th century CE) and subsequent caliphates (8th - 13th centuries CE).
Turanian (Turkey and Central Asia): Early medieval period with Turkic empires and nomadic conquests (6th - 15th centuries CE).
Byzantine (Germany/Eastern Europe): Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages (4th - 15th centuries CE).

## Cultural and Civilizational Paradigms:

1. **Latin (Western Europe - Greece and Rome)**
    
    - Emphasis on rational knowledge and philosophical inquiry.
    - Core focus: law, ethics, and the development of the free, rational, and secular individual.
    - Highlights the supremacy of spiritual forces while acknowledging human imperfection.
    - Legacy: A foundation for modern legal systems and ethical frameworks rooted in reason.
2. **Byzantine (Germany and Eastern Europe)**
    
    - A synthesis of Arabic, Latin, and Turkish influences.
    - Noted for fostering hierarchical and mechanistic approaches to society, laying some ideological groundwork later appropriated by fascist structures.
3. **Turanian (Turkey and Central Asia)**
    
    - A culture centered on military strength and territorial expansion.
    - Loyalty and governance tailored to the ruler, with minimal emphasis on moral frameworks.
    - Religion plays a subdued role in shaping moral values; laws are pragmatically adapted to circumstances.
    - Relativism dominates, with norms and ethics being flexible and situational.
4. **Jewish**
    
    - Deep integration of religion into law, resulting in a dual legal system blending divine commandments with practical governance.
    - Strong theological influence on societal norms and jurisprudence.
5. **Arabian**
    
    - Monotheistic religion (Islam) is central and serves state objectives.
    - Semi-sacred systems with a limited emphasis on family cohesion.
    - Tribal leaders and traditional practices outweigh codified legal systems.
    - Tradition is prioritized over written law, reflecting Islamic and pre-Islamic customs.
6. **Brahmanic (India)**
    
    - A caste-based, deeply sacralized society.
    - Religion shapes all aspects of life, including governance and institutions.
    - The sacred dominates over secular aspects, with an emphasis on ritual and hierarchical order.
7. **Chinese (including Japan and Korea)**
    
    - Strong adherence to cultural traditions and ancestral customs.
    - Individuals display passivity in state matters, prioritizing collective harmony over personal initiative.
    - Governance aligns with Confucian values, emphasizing order and familial loyalty over political activism.

Classical Period

(late 500s BCE to late 400s CE) 1000 years

Medieval Period

(early 500s to late 1300s) 800 years

Gothic

1100 - for “Barbaric”, and was therefore used pejoratively. Its critics saw this type of Medieval art as unrefined and too remote from the aesthetic proportions and shapes of Classical art.

Early Gothic

1100 - First crusade
1204 - Fourth crusade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_art

High Gothic

1250

Late Gothic

1337 - 1453 (fall of Constantinople)- 100 y war !

Renaissance

(late 1300s to early 1600s) 300 years

Renaissance

1300 ~1450+ - “Rebirth” (revise of ancient roman civilization). Fuse Greco-Roman (naturalism , idealism) reinvention into Christianity - rebirth of Classicism.

Beauty, truth, wisdom. Lifechanging ideas. Philosophy.

Start by:

Trades
Gutenberg printing press
Fall of Constantinople 1453

Character:

White marble. Not painted statues. because they copy from statures with paint removed by time. It was their misunderstood of history.
No names . Works made for patrons not signing but some elevated in status to intellectuals:

- paintings slowly dimentional with small amount of depth. More things fit in scale

Italy

Historical classicism - Deliberately trying to copy.
Humanism. Trend in scholastic research and share. Bolonia , univ Paris, Universities.. Oxf , Cambridge… start learning classical knowledge. Human reason and free will. » advanced in science.
- naturalism, what u see
- revival of classicism.

In north

More like natural evolution from middle ages.

Early

In Italy.

People:

1449-1492 Lorenzo de’ Medici’s (patron of art). Build liblary in florence, and patronize art.
1475-1564 Michelangelo
- Pieta - (image of triumf hero died in battle and resurection) vs medieval Vesprerbild (griving over )- Pieta change theme from greve to triumf
- David - made from construction leftover marble block.
- Sistine Chapel 1501-1508-1511 Cenral: story of creation and flood. Profets and sibles aroud and stories of christ ancestors.
Raphael, Leonardo vitruvian man, ….
1433–1499 Marsilio Ficino - Path to highest human ideas. Sex> beauty> love. Sexiness lust glamor and celebrity to serve the most noble and high-minded intellectual ambitions.

Classicism - (naturalism , idealism)

Romantic Period

(late 1700s to late 1800s) 100 years

Modernist Period

(late 1800s to mid 1900s) 75 years 19 and early 20 cent

Modern -pure essence and form pre-Modern - classical values often religion

Modern authors:

James Joyce
Ernest Hemingway
Virginia Woolf

Modernist painters:

Picasso

Postmodernist Period

(~1950s to early 2000s) 40 years

1950 -1960 Postmodernism

Moral relativity, cynicism, irony. Disbelieves in grand narratives . Social constructs. Dumb art like tv series which at the beginning was treated as irony. ‘Condition of late capitalism’. (Fredric Jameson). Collection of consumer choices. Everything is look like equal to everything else because everything is equally consumable. Art is relativized. Makes everything a commodity.

Pastiche. - Borrowing

Jean-Francois Lyotard - book: Post Modern Condition: Suspicion of ‘grand narrative’ post modernist is against grand narrative - we will learn no new truth
Andy Warchol - Shows with his copies, no originality: Mass produced images, there is no self. Postmodern society is an collection of silages that circulate in consumer society. `
Jacques Derrida -
Michel Foucault (FR) - political activist the relationships between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions
Jean Baudrillard (FR) simulation / analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as hyperreality.

Modernism vs Postmodernism

Modernism	Postmodernism
Romanticism/Symbolism	Pataphysics/Dadaism
Form (conjunctive, closed)	Antiform (disjunctive, open)
Purpose	Plat
Design	Chance
Hierarchy	Anatchy
Mastery/ Logos	Exhaustion / Silence
Art Object / Finished Work	Process / Perfoemance / Happening
Distance	Participation
Creation / Totalization	Decreation / Deconstruction
Synthesis	Antithesis
Presence	Absence
Centering	Dispersal
Genre / Boundary	Text / Intertext
Semantics	Rethoric
Paradigm	Syntagm
Hpotaxis	Parataxis
Metaphor	Metonymy
Selection	Combination
Rooy / Depth	Rhizome / Surface
Interpretation / Reading	Against Interpretation / Misreading
Signified	Signifier
Lisible (Readerly)	Scriptable (Writerly)
Narrative / Grande Historie	Anti-narrative / Petite Historie
Master Code	Idiolect
Symptom	Desire
Type	Mutant
Genital / Phallic	Polymorphous / Andorogynus
Paranoia	Schizophrenia
Origin / Cause	Defference-Differance / Trace
God the Father	The Holy Ghost
Metaphysics	Irony
Determinancy	Indeterminacy
Transcendence	Immanence

Rest..

Metaxis - sence of inbetween Synthesis - transcend and include previouse modernism and postm.

Structuralists - looking at the underlining stuctures. Words have no internal meaning, only in the relation to sth else. Meaning is something not present in text itself. Like jazz. structuralists: notes that u dont play. (post structuralists: whitch notes you exacly did you not play, and why did you not play)